


The Ghost on the Shore

by MithrilWren



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (but very brief), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Camping, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Getting to Know Each Other, Ghost Stories, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24099010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MithrilWren/pseuds/MithrilWren
Summary: At 30 - with nothing but a dead-end job, a handful of friends, and two years of undergrad under his belt - Fjord has no idea where his life is going. A week-long camping trip and a mysterious park ranger might be just the thing to set him on his way.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord
Comments: 87
Kudos: 276





	The Ghost on the Shore

**Author's Note:**

> This is an INCREDIBLY belated submission for Fjorclay Week 2020, smushing together the prompts "modern au" and "nature" into one massive bundle that turned out far longer than what I originally planned to do with the premise.
> 
> Because the premise itself wasn't self-indulgent enough, I decided to set this in mid-2000's Canada - which isn't so much modern as modern-adjacent, but hey, it's my fic, I can do what I want ;) For anyone who's not acquainted: PEI (Prince Edward Island), Newfoundland, and Ontario are all provinces of Canada. The rest of the setting should hopefully be self-explanatory :)

“I think you’ll need to make another trip.”

Fjord sighed as Yasha dropped down beside him on the rock overlooking the campsite. Yasha put her solo cup on the ground at the rock’s foot, where it immediately tipped and began watering the dry grass with its foamy contents. He took a sip from his own beer, wincing at the watery taste, but swallowing as much as he could. 

Below them lay the cause of his soon to be late night excursion to the 24/7 with its adjoining liquor store (a full fifteen kilometers outside the park, not exactly his idea of a fun midnight jaunt). Veth and Beau were currently engaged in a furious whiskey chugging battle, a perfectly sober Jester and a slightly-less-than-sober Caleb on the sidelines cheering them on, with equal levels of enthusiasm. Scattered around the quartet were empty bottles and discarded cups, kicked about and trodden on until they were halfway embedded into the sticky dirt. Any trace of wildlife had long since fled their little patch of ground along the lake, driven off by the hollers and cheers that were only increasing in volume as the night drew on.

Fjord shivered in his light jacket. Though the night wasn’t really that cold, he still felt a chill wafting off of the water at their backs. But moving closer to the fire meant involving himself in all _that,_ and it didn’t seem worth it.

“You want to come with me?”

“No,” said Yasha, staring forlornly at her spilled drink. 

“...Ok.” Fjord twirled the beer bottle between his palms. He’d only had the one, so he was probably still good to drive, but the thought of going out alone through the woods - even with the sturdy-bodied protection of the pickup - made him nervous. 

There were… sure a lot of noises, out here at night. 

“If we switched out the vodka with water, do you think they’d notice?” he asked. “They’re pretty far gone.”

Yasha, who’d had as much as the rest of them, but also had a constitution that left her clear-eyed despite the overindulgence, considered the matter carefully. “Maybe not Beau. But Veth?”

Fjord frowned down at the shortest of their friends, who was stumbling into an unprotesting Caleb’s arms amid a bout of hiccups. “Yeah. Better not risk it.” He wanted to be able to sleep in the tent tonight without worrying about waking up to find his sleeping bag slashed open with a Swiss Army knife. Or, more likely - because he didn’t actually think Veth was _that_ vengeful - the keys to his truck would be gone, held for ransom until he agreed to make a trek to the park’s tuck shop for conciliatory potato chips.

Somewhere across the dark water, a loon wailed, and for the first time this evening Fjord managed to suppress the startle at the eerie sound. He understood what he was getting into with this camping trip, in theory, but he hadn’t anticipated exactly how _close_ all the wildlife would be. It was different back in PEI - he’d spent a lot of time outdoors there, but at least the fish stayed safely underwater until he chose to bring them up. Here, he couldn’t go ten metres without running into a woodpecker, or a deer, or a set of bear tracks running worryingly close to the central outhouse of the park. 

Though he was used to living in unpopulated areas, he _had_ been enjoying the relative civilization of proper town (if not city) life. It still seemed a little backwards to abandon all that in favour of staking a tent in the woods, where you had to piss in a drafty wooden shack and pick drowned mosquitos out of your cereal in the morning. It certainly wouldn’t be his first choice of ‘leisure’ activity.

Still, he thought as he surveyed the mismatched group of friends below, their laughter rising to a crescendo as Beau snorted their last collective beer out of her nose, sometimes… he could see the appeal, at least over spending the rest of his life hauling up lobster traps off the shore of Newfoundland. Friends were definitely better than that - even if they dragged him out into the wilderness for no good reason, just to drink half the nights away and leave him an ungodly mess to clean up in the morning. 

And hey, that was something he could contribute to the trip, at least. Well, that and the truck. It was nice to be needed.

Yasha laid back on the rock, her hands behind her head so she could stare up at the stars. They were far brighter out here than in town, and Fjord took a moment to admire them as well. He couldn’t name all the constellations, but he appreciated their light nonetheless. If it was pitch dark out here, he wasn’t sure he could handle it.

“I’m bored,” Fjord mumbled, hoping Yasha - their resident wilderness expert, and the chooser of this particular provincial park for their excursion - would have some woodsy suggestion to while the rest of the night away, one that was more interesting than driving out for more booze or nursing his one measly beer for another hour.

“We could tell ghost stories,” Yasha suggested. Fjord grimaced. He really didn’t need one more reason to be afraid of the dark.

“That’s… Maybe not-”

“Do you know any?”

He knew a few, mostly because Beau and Jester made him marathon _Creepy Canada_ with them one fateful weekend that he still hadn’t quite recovered from, even half a year later, but none that he wanted to think about when he was already feeling antsy and exposed, here on the edge of nothing except dense forest for miles, and endless water on the other side. 

On the other hand, ghost stories were supposed to be part of the _camping experience,_ if after school specials were to be believed. Maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to shut himself out of something new. He’d already come all the way out here, so might as well… give it a shot.

“...You go first,” he said at last.

“Ok.” Yasha took a deep breath, never one to speak hastily. “You know, there were- uh- lots of ships that sank on the lake, hundreds of years ago. Just… horrible wrecks. So much death.” She spoke with her typical perfunctory style - light on detail, but her deep voice still lending the words gravity, enough that Fjord was already shivering even before the tale had truly started. The moonlight catching the corner of his eye looked too much like the outline of a ghost ship beneath the rippled surface of the lake. 

“One boat wrecked within sight of the port, during a terrible storm. Lightning struck the mast and broke the deck in half. People were screaming, jumping in the water, because… well, the boat was sinking.” Fjord turned over onto his stomach, facing the water and squinting his eyes. He could see it - the doomed ship, and the flash of white light over the centre of the lake that brought the mighty vessel to its end. His mind supplied the colour that Yasha’s halting words didn’t: a grain hauler, maybe, but three-masted, like a pirate ship - it seemed more romantic than a cargo vessel. 

“A sailor took a lantern and waved it around, trying to signal the port for help, but they couldn’t see the light through the rain. He jumped the water and swam for shore, but the current was too strong, and he drowned. He… sank to the bottom, but, um- how did this go… Right. After a few years, another storm washed his bones up onto the beach. And the lantern was still in his hands. They say,” Yasha said, sounding uncomfortable in the sudden shift to stylistic storytelling, even as she waved her hand around to indicate the abstract _they,_ “that the sailor still walks the shore with his lantern every night, looking for someone to help save his ship. So if you see a light on the edge of the lake, that’s, um- that’s him. And his lantern.”

Yasha trailed off, and Fjord immediately missed the low sound of her voice. Absent of her words, all he could hear were the soft waves lapping on the rocky beach, and though there were no lights on the opposite shore, the rustling of the pines was transformed into movement by the sudden dread in Fjord’s heart. His hands clenched, impossibly colder than before.

Yup, confirmed. This wasn’t an experience he needed to repeat. He did _not_ like ghost stories. 

“Cool,” he said, in a deliberately steady voice, because Yasha, who had never flinched from anything in her life, didn’t need to know exactly how much of a scaredy cat he was. “Great- great story. Liked all the, uh… creepy stuff.”

Though Fjord’s arms were rapidly curling around himself, he swore that Yasha’s seemed to relax, as though she was letting go of a different sort of apprehension than his own. “Oh. Good.” She turned her head away, and Fjord took the opportunity to suck in a breath.

_There’s no such thing as ghosts._

_Even if we’re all out here, alone in the middle of the woods, with the closest payphone a forty minute hike away, it’s fine, because there’s no such thing as ghosts._

_No such-_

“Hello there.”

The rumbling, unfamiliar voice, combined with a sudden splash of light on the ground by his feet sent Fjord tumbling off the rock. He crawled backwards on all fours, staring up in terror at the spectral apparition who had suddenly appeared in their midst. A long, gaunt face, surrounded by gnarled waves of long, unkempt hair, dark eyes sunken deep into their sockets. After so much darkness, the light in the apparition’s hands was too bright for Fjord to make out its form, but he knew, he _knew_ it was a lantern.

“Stay back, ghost!” he shouted - or tried to shout, only it came out as more of a frightened squeak.

The eyes narrowed in distinctly human-like confusion, and the light, which had been pointed at Fjord, swung up, revealing its shape to be… a large, handheld flashlight. 

“Is there a ghost?” the stranger asked, and turned around, like he expected to see whatever phantom Fjord had shouted at behind him. Finding nothing, he turned back to Fjord. By that point, Yasha had gotten to her feet (more gracefully than him, he noted bitterly) and offered Fjord a hand, but the rest of the group was still cheerily drinking, blissfully unaware of the not-apparition lurking on the edge of their campsite.

“Who are you?” Fjord asked, somewhat more accusatory than he’d normally be, if he hadn’t just been given the biggest fright of his life. The stranger only smiled in response before turning to the drinkers by the campfire. He had the advantage of a full foot over Fjord - another alarming detail.

“It seems like you’re all having a nice evening.” His voice, though gentle, seemed to boom at twice the volume it should. At last the others’ heads whipped up. Caleb dropped the bottle he was holding, mouth hanging open with either surprise or drunken slackness, and Beau’s hand shot out to catch it before it landed. Even liquor couldn’t dull her typical inhuman reflexes. “But I’m afraid I’ve been getting complaints from other campers.”

“Who the hell are you?” Beau slurred, and Fjord suddenly felt better about his own comparative rudeness. 

“Caduceus Clay,” the stranger said, not sounding at all chagrined by Beau’s attitude. “I’m the park ranger here.”

“Oh shit,” Beau muttered, with the same tone of voice Fjord was used to hearing accompanied by the sound of police sirens. 

“Nice to meet you!” Jester called, and Clay? - Caduceus? - returned her wave, the pleasant smile never leaving his lips. Veth eyed him warily over the rim of her whiskey bottle.

“Now, I don’t want to break up such an enjoyable gathering. But I’m afraid we do have noise regulations, and it’s…” Caduceus tapped the watch on his wrist, then frowned and twisted the knob on the side.

“Two thirty-seven AM,” Caleb supplied, then burped loudly and fell against Beau’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Caduceus said gratefully. “Yes, two thirty-seven. And we want to make sure all our guests can get some sleep - the animals too. The birds, especially, appreciate their nightly rest. They have long days ahead of them.” Fjord turned to Yasha, who gave him an equally befuddled look as Caduceus trailed off, lost in thought, before suddenly finding his focus again. “If you could postpone the rest of your party until tomorrow morning, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Who are _you,”_ said Veth, breaking her silence to point an accusatory finger up at Caduceus, “to tell us when we can and can’t drink, huh?” The alcohol gave her a reckless tint, and Fjord lifted up a hand, trying to cut in before anything escalated. _Please, for the love of fuck, don’t get us kicked out in the middle of the night._

“Now, let’s just-” he started.

“I’m the park ranger,” Caduceus repeated, and the finality in his voice brooked no protest. Even Veth, who would usually be egged on by that kind of challenge, sat back.

“Ok... yeah. Good point.”

Fjord breathed a sigh of relief as the others started to pack up the remaining liquor, then turned back to Caduceus. Despite the fact that Caleb was a few years older than Fjord’s 30, he was used to playing the ‘responsible adult’ in the group by now, which usually meant smoothing over frayed relationships with authority figures. 

“Hey, sorry,” he said. “We promise to try and keep it down from now on.” A promise he wasn’t at all sure he could enforce, but he _would_ try. The only thing worse than the prospect of another week of camping was the prospect of spending tonight sleeping in the back of his truck, which is what he was pretty sure would happen if they got kicked out at this hour.

“Oh, that’s alright.” The stern tone in Caduceus’s voice was already gone, melded once again into a vague pleasantness. “You aren’t the first guests I’ve given a talking-to this week.”

“Ah,” said Fjord. “Great, well… sorry again, then. Hope you have a good night.”

Caduceus nodded, and with one last sweep over the campsite with his flashlight, now clear of most of the evidence of the night’s festivities, he turned and walked back into the forest.

The flashlight bobbed amongst the trees, flickering like a drunken firefly between the broad trunks as the light grew smaller, and then that was gone too, leaving them alone.

“Bedtime?” Jester said in a tired voice. Beau groaned and collapsed face first onto the ground. When Fjord glanced over, Caleb was already asleep - had probably conked out midway through Fjord’s brief conversation with Caduceus - and Veth was in the process of making a pillow out of his legs.

“Bedtime,” Yasha agreed. She walked over and fireman-hoisted the first of their friends onto her shoulder to bring them into the tent for the night. Once everyone had been safely stowed, she slipped inside as well, but Fjord lingered a moment longer at the centre of the now deserted campsite, sparing one last glance over his shoulder towards the lake.

There were still no lanterns on the shore, but…

He didn’t think he could sleep, if he didn’t check.

* * *

Even if it wasn’t him that interrupted the drinking game, conciliatory chips were still required of Fjord the next morning. After taking orders - sour cream and onion for Caleb, ketchup for Veth, all dressed for Jester, bacon for Beau, and Yasha said she’d just take some from everyone else after Fjord assured her there was _absolutely_ no chance they’d have the flavour _‘cool lemon’_ \- Fjord set off on the indented tire treads that served as the only road back to the Visitor Centre. The same clearing also hosted the park’s tuck shop, which they hadn’t had a chance to check out yet.

He would have dragged someone along with him for company, but everyone else was too hungover or tired to consider leaving the tent, save Yasha, who had “things to do” and set off in the opposite direction of the Visitor Centre long before any of the others woke. Fjord secretly hoped “things” included securing something for dinner. She’d caught perch for them the first night at the park - though strangely, none of them had seen a fishing pole at any point in the packing process - and fresh fish roasted over an open fire? Delicious.

So it was that he found himself alone, awkwardly pushing open the door to the little shop and hoping he wasn’t too early. There were no listed hours of operation, or even a “we’re open!” sign, which was nearly enough to make him turn around right then and there. He’d even considered taking a leisurely circular hike until it was at least eleven, just to be sure. But to his relief, the door wasn’t locked. The ill-fitting contraption of plywood and screen mesh swung open easily, if not silently: a whole chorus of windchimes, of various pitches and timbres, heralded his entry. The attendant behind the counter looked up with a pleasant smile at the sound.

A very _familiar_ pleasant smile, though less fearsome under the natural light streaming in from the doorway and windows. It was harder to mistake him for a ghost in this thoroughly mundane setting.

“Hello,” said the attendant, who was also the park ranger, and Fjord wracked his tired brain for a good five seconds before coming up with the name ‘Caduceus’. He then spent the next five seconds debating whether just to turn tail and run. Fjord’s face was already flushing with the memory of their first meeting. His chastisement, gentle as it might have been, was still fresh in Fjord’s mind, though he’d had a night to get over the feeling. 

Was it possible to be embarrassed of friends that weren’t even there?

“Hey,” Fjord said back, once he decided that bolting like a frightened deer wasn’t likely to reduce the mortification of the encounter. He stepped into the shop and shut the door, careful not to knock over the precarious turnwheel of paperbacks by the entrance. “You, uh- you work here too?” For a moment, he thought of Pumat Sol and his brothers, who ran the campus bookstore, and wondered at the likelihood that there were _two_ sets of outrageously tall identical siblings peddling their wares within an eight hour drive of each other. 

Caduceus only smiled. “I take care of a lot of things in the park. Whatever needs doing, I do.” 

Under this light, Fjord was surprised by a few aspects of his newly revealed appearance. First, that Caduceus was a lot younger than Fjord initially believed. While his voice was deep and roughened at the centre, his face was a little like Veth’s: hard to place an exact age, but tending towards somewhere in the mid-to-late 20’s. He was definitely older than Beau, and definitely younger than Caleb, but that’s about all Fjord was willing to swear on. 

The second was his _hair._ What had seemed almost white in the glow of halogen bulbs shone a sugary, unnatural pink in the light of day, and was now tied into a loose braid curving down one side of his head. Quite a bit of it had already escaped the twine knot at the base, or perhaps had never made it into the braid to begin with. 

“Cool, cool,” said Fjord, still moderately uncomfortable. He almost wanted to apologize again for last night, but maybe it was better not to bring it up. The last thing he wanted was to give Caduceus a chance to reconsider whether to kick them out. “I’m just gonna grab a few things, alright?”

“Take your time.” Caduceus sat back and closed his eyes, basking in the light from the window like a lazy cat. The plants on the shelf behind him looked healthy and well-fed, and Fjord was struck with the ridiculous thought that left long enough in the sun, Caduceus’s cherry locks might start sprouting buds as well. 

The tuck shop was small, but surprisingly well stocked. It held tall cooler of soft drinks, a few rows of crooked shelves with cans of beans and other non-perishables, a corner devoted to camping supplies that someone might have forgotten or lost, plenty of junk food, and even those little candy bins full of sour keys and gummy whales, the same kind he used to buy as a kid from the corner store whenever he found a nickel or two - or, on one momentous occasion, a whole _loonie -_ in the change dispenser of the laundromat vending machine. 

He noticed too late that the chips were actually on the wall behind the counter, hung from little plastic hooks, which meant Fjord had to pretend to peruse the rest of the aisles before sheepishly making his way back to Caduceus with nothing but a spare pack of matches and whatever paperback looked least offensive from the rack by the door. He had no idea what Caleb liked in literature, but Fjord figured buying him _something_ would delay the inevitable second trip back to the store once he got wind there were books for sale.

“Just these?”

“Give me a sec,” Fjord said, and pulled out the slip of paper from his pocket. “Got a list,” he said, already embarrassed by the quantity of junk food he was about to buy. He read off the items quickly, barely giving Caduceus enough time to grab one bag before he was on to the next. Once Fjord reached the end, he went through the bags one by one, pointing at each and naming off the owner to make sure he didn’t miss anyone.

“-and Jester,” he finished. “Ok, yeah, that’s everything.”

Caduceus picked up the first bag. “I didn’t know they made a flavour with onions,” he said, staring at it with an intense curiousity, like he’d never really looked at a bag of potato chips before and was fascinated to discover a whole new world of foil packaging outside his sphere of knowledge. “Interesting!” He turned back to Fjord. “Which is your favourite?”

“Oh, uh-” 

It had totally slipped his mind to pick a bag for himself. Fjord still wasn’t really used to having junk food available - his group home wasn’t much for providing snacks when he was younger, and it’s not like there was a convenience store out on a 14 day lobster run in the middle of the gulf, though Vandran did used to stock an ungodly quantity of pretzels in the boat’s little kitchen. He didn’t tend to crave the same salty snacks that the others did. 

Fjord stared up at the array of chips on the wall - dozens of flavours, from at least four brands - and his chest clenched, overwhelmed by the wealth of choices, and suddenly wishing desperately that Jester had come along, so she could tell him what to buy. It’s not like there was a _wrong_ decision, he knew that, but there were so many options, and every second he debated he was making Caduceus wait, and he was probably still annoyed at Fjord from last night, so _come on,_ just _choose-_

“Plain,” he forced out. “Just… plain.”

Caduceus looked down at the pile between them. “I think you forgot that one.” He reached up and grabbed a bag of ruffles before Fjord could protest. “Nice and simple. I like that.”

“What’s yours?” Fjord said, his face bursting into flames the moment the words left his mouth. _Just_ leave, _you’ve taken up enough of his time already-_

Caduceus blinked, looking taken aback by the question. He pondered the matter for a long moment, longer than most people would find comfortable. “I’m not really sure.”

“Oh,” said Fjord. 

He didn’t realize that was an option.

Fjord handed over the cash and Caduceus rung him out, and Fjord dragged the armload of chip bags out to the truck. He got as far as turning the ignition before smacking his forehead. _Firewood._ They needed more firewood. He’d thought he’d bought enough to last the whole week before they left, but he’d underestimated Caleb’s propensity for large, prolonged blazes.

Flush of embarrassment fully renewed, Fjord walked back into the shop. Caduceus startled again from his doze, looking at Fjord in surprise. “Have I been asleep that long?” He turned around towards the window, concerned. “But it’s still light out… what day is it?”

“No,” said Fjord quickly, “I, uh, I just forgot something. Do you guys sell firewood?” 

Caduceus shook his head, seemingly reoriented, though his look was still a little muddled. “Sure. It’s around back.”

Fjord had assumed Caduceus’s loose white button-down was paired with the kind of olive green slacks typical of park employees, but as he stood and walked around the counter, there was a distinct _swish_ of fabric. In place of slacks, he was wearing a teal broomstick skirt, the sheer fabric embroidered with little green vines and pink flowers. It swept the dusty floor around him as he walked towards the door.

Fjord tried and failed not to stare. He’d… never seen a guy wearing a skirt before, except for the occasional kilt at the local Highland Games back in PEI. And suddenly, it was _him_ who was self-conscious, even though his own polo and baggy cargo pants were about the most conformist outfit possible: Fjord had taken one look at the other students on campus on his first day, then looked down at his own plaid shirt and beat up jeans, and walked himself straight to Hollister after class.

In the sticky heat of mid-summer, the light fabric - almost see-through, he could make out the shape of Caduceus’s willowy legs when he walked past the light - was perfectly sensible. It… it made sense, even if he’d never considered something like that before. There was no reason why Fjord should suddenly feel so disoriented, like a pedestal in his brain had tilted and let a cascade of marbles loose to rattle around his skull.

“This way.” Caduceus held the door open for him, and led them both out onto the gravel path connecting the tuck shop and the Visitor Centre. He managed to avert his eyes as they walked along, until Caduceus ducked into the darkened space between the two buildings. 

Fjord had thought when he arrived that the shadows over the alley were from an encroaching tree, but as he followed Caduceus, he discovered the shade was actually from a broad, oblong shape suspended above their hands by wooden slats running between the two buildings. It was a canoe, its birchbark sides wrapped over a frame of rough-carved cedar bows - large enough to seat at least eight, with six paddles hung from hooks on the wall beneath. Fjord stared up in interest as Caduceus went just beyond the tip of the canoe and came back with a box filled to the brim with orange mesh sacks of firewood. 

“This is really beautiful,” he said, as Caduceus set the box down. “I’ve never seen one up close before.” He’d learned about them in school, of course, but his time on the water as an adult had only been spent on fishing vessels, and it’s not like his group home was much for outdoorsy weekend trips. 

“My family made it,” Caduceus explained, wiping his hands on his hips to clear away the dust from the wood. 

“Wow.” Fjord reached up, just tall enough to brush his fingertips against the sandy-brown bark. The outside of the canoe was slightly rough, but the interior was smooth as polished stone. “Do you take it out often?”

Caduceus paused before answering. “I haven’t for a long time. Firewood?” He offered Fjord a bag. Fjord took it, then grabbed three more to be safe. 

“How much?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.”

“...Are you sure?” Fjord asked dubiously. He’d be grateful for the discount - snacks had already eaten up a good chunk of his cash for the week - but he also didn’t want to cheat the park out of money. He had enough experience with government funding and subsidies to know that they didn’t leave much to spare after the bills were paid.

“There’s plenty more. And I’ve lost count of the inventory already, anyway. I’ve never been good with numbers.” 

Fjord chuckled softly. “You and me both. Well, alright. if you’re sure.” 

Caduceus inclined his head, and Fjord hoisted the bags a little higher in his arms and started back towards his truck. Just as they dipped back out of the shade into the sunshine, Caduceus spoke up once more, as though the rest of another thought had come to him only after Fjord had moved the conversation along.

“She was always much better with numbers than me.”

“Who?”

“My sister, Clarabelle.” Caduceus smiled once more, but his eyes were distant. 

“Does she work here too?” Fjord asked, dropping the bags into the flatbed and turning back to Caduceus. 

“She used to. When we were younger.”

“Gotcha.” Fjord, who’d never considered the other kids at the home his siblings, couldn’t quite relate to the wistfulness in Caduceus’s voice, but the clear affection for the mysterious sister warmed his heart nonetheless. “Look, I’ve gotta get back before my friends wake up again, but thanks again for all your help.”

“Come back anytime,” Caduceus said, his words somehow more sincere than the typical perfunctory farewell.

“I’m sure I will,” Fjord replied, just as honestly. His friends weren’t exactly big on planning ahead, and he expected he’d be making at least a few more supply runs over the next week. “Till next time, then.”

“Till next time,” Caduceus echoed, and the soft warmth of his voice lingered with Fjord even as he pulled out of the driveway and back onto the road, doing nothing to ease the slightly unsettled feeling that still churned in his stomach.

When he glanced in the rearview mirror, he saw Caduceus was standing by the door, watching him go. Only when Fjord was about to make the first turn into the trees did he walk back inside the shop, skirt still swishing as the screen door closed behind him.

* * *

‘Next time’ turned out to be the very next morning, because lo and behold, Beau wanted to go hiking but she’d forgotten the maps. Fjord didn’t even pretend to be surprised; he just pinched his nose and shoved her towards the truck. 

What _was_ surprising was seeing Caleb dash to the other side of the vehicle, handily beating Beau to shotgun as he clambered inside.

“You need something from the store too?” Fjord asked, strapping himself into the driver’s seat. 

“I thought I’d join you two on the hike.”

He crossed his arms in the front seat, positively drowning in sweaters and scarves and looking abjectly miserable about the idea. Fjord quirked an eyebrow at Beau.

“I told him he had to pick something to participate in,” explained Beau as she gingerly tried to fold her limbs into the narrow back seat, a space only Veth could truly fit comfortably into. “You’re not allowed to go camping and spend the whole time on _work._ It’s against the rules.”

“According to who?” grumbled Caleb. “And just because I took the week off, doesn’t mean my thesis isn’t due next month.”

“Dude, you finished that paper in May, don’t try to bullshit me.”

“ _Finished_ is not the same as _edited_ and _ready for publication,_ Beauregard.”

Beau scoffed, but her look was fond as she punched Caleb lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll have fun, I promise.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

Fjord still didn’t quite know how Beau and Caleb made their unlikely friendship work, but somehow, they’d managed to fight their way into a level of comradery that rivalled any pairing in the group. He still remembered when he had to jump between the two to stop a physical altercation almost every week, back when he’d finally grown accustomed to the strangeness of spending his spare time on the cold floor of Jester and Beau’s dorm room, only for Caleb and Veth to join in and throw the entire dynamic into confusion again. 

The pair, who Jester met in meal hall and decided to befriend on the spot, weren’t the easiest people to love at first glance. But at the time, Fjord had been incredibly grateful to add Caleb to the mix of their group. It was such a relief to have another mature student around: someone to remind him that he wasn’t the only thirty-something in the world taking undergraduate classes. It was hard for Fjord to fathom _why_ that was the case - Caleb was pretty much the smartest person he’d ever met, with top grades in every subject, even his electives. What bits and pieces Caleb had doled out of his story were that he’d been admitted to a Master’s program at the University of Toronto straight out of high school, but dropped out less than two years later, without even a Bachelor’s to show for it. Fjord had eventually gleaned there was something about an international math competition as well, and a professor who showed a special interest, but that was it. 

Still, he wasn’t going to press Caleb on an obviously sore subject, for the same reason he was grateful Caleb didn’t seem interested in asking about Fjord’s childhood. Some things just weren’t that easy to talk about.

Caleb and Beau bickered goodnaturedly all the way to the Visitor Centre, while Fjord kept a lookout for potholes in his truck’s path, each of which was filled with a few inches of muddy water from the sprinkle they’d gotten overnight. It was a bit of a hazy morning, and cooler than the day before. Fjord couldn’t complain about that - as much as he hated the cold of the evening wind, he didn’t mind a little breeze during the day, what with hiking being on the agenda. 

Beau was wearing a lime-green windbreaker and dark sunglasses, despite the overcast sky. She flipped the glasses up at Fjord as she pushed past Caleb once they’d arrived, practically crawling over his lap in her hurry to get out of the backseat. Fjord rolled his eyes, but still gave her a thumbs up. _Looking good._

To his mild disappointment, the door to the Visitor Centre was absent of windchimes, but it still made a pleasant groan as he pushed it open. The inside matched the rustic exterior - though the tuck shop was made of whitewashed boards, the Centre was constructed more like a log cabin. Bare wood made up the walls, with a curtain hung from a rail and shower rings to form a makeshift second room at the back. 

And sitting at the desk was… Caduceus.

Fjord froze, wondering now if his earlier suspicion about Pumat Sol and a rash of identical twins had been correct. He couldn’t be the _only_ employee working at the park?

Caduceus’s face brightened as he spied the three visitors at the doorway. “Hello again!” he called, setting down what looked to be a woven basket of some kind, just small enough to fit between his two large palms. Long fibrous strands still poked out near the top of the weave, the work only half-finished. 

“What’s up?” Beau called back, striding straight up to the desk. Caleb was immediately distracted by the turnstiles of pamphlets about local history and geography, which left Fjord hovering anxiously somewhere in the middle, not sure whether it would be more or less awkward to ignore Caduceus when he’d just seen him the day before, or to introduce himself to the man for a third time in as many days. “Wait… I remember you!”

Well, that was Fjord’s decision made, and he darted up behind Beau, ready to play damage control the moment she brought up their group’s partying ways. 

“So do I,” said Caduceus. “Nice to see you again, at a more reasonable hour.”

“Yeah, sorry I didn’t say hi properly before. I was pretty blitzed.” Fjord winced. “I’m Beau.”

“Caduceus,” he introduced himself again, then turned to Fjord. “Was the firewood alright? No issues?”

“Yeah,” said Fjord, rubbing the back of his neck, “no issues.” Then, because he realized it had never actually come up, he said, “Fjord, by the way.” 

Fjord stuck out his hand, and Caduceus took it. His fingertips were rough, still dusted with little slivers of whatever material the basket was made of, and Fjord rubbed his fingers together after he withdrew them - feeling off-centre once more, and still not sure of the reason why.

“That’s Caleb,” Beau said, sticking her thumb in the direction of the pamphlets. Caleb gave a little wave, not looking up from his current selection. “We’re looking for maps. Best hiking routes, you know, that kind of shit.”

“Sure,” said Caduceus easily. He reached over past Beau and tapped his finger on a plastic display case, just a few inches left of her nose, emblazoned with the word _MAPS._ “We’ve got those.”

While Beau immersed herself in picking out a route, Fjord shuffled in place, hoping Caduceus would take it upon himself to propose a topic of conversation, which… didn’t happen. Which meant he had no choice but to try and fill the silence himself.

“So... “ Fjord said at last, “what do you do if people show up at the shop and the Visitor Centre at the same time?”

Caduceus shrugged. “I help whoever comes first, and the others have to wait.”

“People don’t get mad?” Fjord had worked a public service job or two in his life, mostly during the summers when he was still attending high school, and if there was one thing he’d learned, making people wait was the quickest way to get a stack of coupons thrown at his head.

“It’s fine. People are always angry at me. Most of my job is to tell them what they’re not allowed to do.” Caduceus laughed softly. “That’s why I appreciated what you said, Fjord.” He savoured the newly given name, as if committing it to memory.

“What did I say?” Fjord wracked his brain, and couldn’t come up with a single interesting thing he’d uttered in the man’s presence.

“‘Sorry’,” Caduceus said simply.

From anyone else, it might have come off as passive-aggressive, but there was something about the way Caduceus said the word - with an unprofound, honest _gratefulness -_ that left Fjord desperate to look away, fighting a blush once more.

“Oh. Yeah, I mean. Any decent person would apologize,” he mumbled into his shoulder. “We weren’t being very respectful.”

That was really Vandran’s phrasing, not his own, but it felt right in the moment. _Respectful._ That was what Vandran expected of him, and what the man had modeled himself. His foster dad wasn’t a gentle soul, but he’d _respected_ Fjord - treated him like an adult, even at 15, when Fjord first moved in. He gave him responsibilities like any other crewmate, listened to his ideas… Fjord had never been shown that kind of consideration before in his life. All Vandran asked in return was that Fjord show him and his boat the same respect. That was easy to do, because both deserved it. 

And Caduceus deserved that respect too. He was running this park, almost by himself, it seemed, and it wasn’t right to make things harder for him. Of that, Fjord felt very sure. 

“No harm done.” Caduceus turned back to Beau, who’d finally made her selections. “Good choices,” he said. “But any of those would take you most of the day. Do you have enough supplies?”

“Yup.” Beau hefted her nylon backpack onto the counter, unzipping the top to reveal a plethora of nutrition bars, pieces of fruit, spare batteries, and plastic water canteens. “We’re all set.”

“What about emergency supplies?” Caduceus asked. “Thermal blanket? Bandages?” 

“Check and check.” Beau dug to the bottom of the bag, revealing the sheen of foil fabric beneath a disorganized, but well-stocked first aid kit. She’d had a bit more time in the great outdoors than Fjord, though most of it was spent being a bad influence for the local kids at the skate park, but Fjord was grateful she’d taken charge of the packing portion of this endeavour. He’d had no idea how much _stuff_ went into a hiking day trip.

“Compass?”

“Don’t need it.” Beau jabbed her finger in Caleb’s direction. “We’ve got this guy.”

Without missing a beat, Caleb explained, “I always know which way is north.”

Caduceus looked skeptical, which was a sentiment Fjord somewhat shared. Even with Caleb’s keen sense of direction - which was, he could admit, uncanny - he wasn’t sure how well it’d hold up when they were twenty kilometres deep into thick forest, especially if they couldn’t see the sun through the clouds. 

“Interesting,” Caduceus said, “but I think I’d still feel more comfortable if you had one. Though I’m sure the animals would be grateful for the extra food, I would hate to stumble across your corpses when the ice thaws next spring.” 

Beau’s face turned green, as Fjord’s stomach did a flip at the grisly imagery. “We’ll take one,” he said quickly.

“Excellent.” Caduceus turned towards the door to the tuck shop, and Fjord made to follow him. But Caduceus paused, worrying his lip, before reaching his hand down into his shirt and drawing out a leather cord. At the end of it hung a compass, carved of wood and glass. He pulled it over his head and held the cord out - not to Beau, but to Fjord.

“I think we’re sold out in the shop. You can borrow mine.” 

Fjord frowned in confusion - where he was almost certain he’d seen compasses the day before - but he took it, staring down at the whittled sides, chiseled in the shape of flowers and little budded mushrooms, and the delicate silver needle floating in clear liquid beneath the glass cover. “Wow,” was all he could think to say. “Where did you get this?”

“I made it.”

Fjord looked up.

“We can’t take this,” he hedged, flummoxed by the generosity of the offer. “What if… I don’t know, we drop it? I would hate to break something you made.”

“I trust you to take good care of it,” said Caduceus, entirely too confident in his caretaking skills, having met Fjord less than 48 hours before. “Just… bring it back, tomorrow?”

Beau was eyeing the piece eagerly, and even Caleb wandered over to take a closer look, nodding at the beautiful design.

“...Yeah,” Fjord said at last. “Sure thing.” Caduceus smiled approvingly, and Fjord placed the leather cord around his own neck and slipped the compass into the safety of his shirt, shivering as the weight of the cool wood settled against his sternum.

“You’ll want to head out soon, if you’re going to be back by dark. And I do recommend you be back by dark,” Caduceus said, the warning more ominous than Fjord thought was strictly necessary. But neither Beau nor Caleb seemed put off by the veiled threat of… whatever happened after nightfall, and they left cheerfully, their various pamphlets and maps in hand. Fjord gave Caduceus a little wave as he stepped out the door, and Caduceus waved back. As they drove along the bumpy backwoods trails, the compass bounced against his chest. He placed one hand over it, checking it was still there every few kilometres, until they reached the trailhead of Beau’s choice.

The woods before them were vast, and dark, and somehow more frightening than they were before Caduceus’s words of caution, but there was a certain comfort in knowing he had a talisman to guide them all back home.

* * *

Truthfully, Fjord had expected Caleb to be the straggler of the hike, but the one factor he had underestimated was his and Beau’s relentless competitiveness. 

They began the day with Beau and Fjord at the front, Beau pushing him to do some warmup walking squats along the way, which he successfully argued would kill him right then and there. Meanwhile, Caleb hung back to read all the informational signs posted along the trail, describing local flora and fauna and explaining the origins of various sights they might see along the way. Fjord noticed there were smaller, somewhat less professional signs - in that they were hand-painted and absent plexiglass protectors - lower to the ground, but keeping up with Beau didn’t leave much time to get a closer look.

By the time eleven had rolled around, Beau and Caleb had pulled ahead, in fierce competition to see who could reach and read the next signpost first. Beau inevitably won most contests by her sheer speed, but Caleb was crafty - he managed to creep in the lead more than once, disappearing into the undergrowth and reappearing just shy of Beau’s tail. 

This left Fjord at the back, free to wander leisurely along at his own speed. It might have been very relaxing, if he hadn’t been staunchly trying to ignore the presence of the letter still lurking at the bottom of his pack, burning a hole through the peaceful atmosphere. He’d been hoping to have Beau alone today, so he could show her, maybe even ask her advice, but… now that it came to it, he wasn’t sure he would have had the courage anyway, even if Caleb wasn’t there.

_… required to declare a major by the end of your second academic year. The deadline for your choice… soon elapsed… please send your response to the Registrar’s Office as soon as possible…_

Fjord kicked at the ground, fighting the urge to punch a tree just to get a bit of the helpless frustration out. But if he did that, Caleb and Beau would turn around, and _ask what was wrong,_ and…

God, he didn’t want to have to explain it to them.

The year Vandran died (not ‘was killed’ - nobody wanted to hear ‘was killed’, least of all the police, who deemed the wreck an accident before the last of the bodies were even fished out of the water-) Fjord knew he had to get out. University had always seemed like an unattainable pipe dream. Bad grades and cruel classmates were all he knew of the educational system, and the thought of returning to all of that wasn’t exactly pleasant. He’d dropped out halfway through high school to join Vandran’s crew full-time, and though he’d eventually gotten his GED - eked out over bleary-eyed nights below deck, trying and failing to write legible algebra on a slowly shifting surface - he knew it was a long shot. But anything was better than staying where he was: on the same ocean where Vandran had died _(was killed),_ and where the boat he had called home had sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, never to be seen again.

He sucked up his pride and called his old high school, and a few days later a box arrived in the mail with a stack of university catalogues. His fingers lingered over the first one. University of Toronto. If ever there was a pipe dream, that was it, and for a moment he almost let himself consider it. Would that have made Vandran proud - Fjord applying to the most prestigious school in the country? There was a little thrill in his chest at the vision of himself in a cap and gown, shaking the hand of the university president, with his diploma in the other. 

If he went there, he’d have a real _place_ in the world.

But just as quickly, the imagined thrill sunk into melancholy. He didn’t have the background to get into U of T. He doubted he’d even get a response from any school in Ontario, let alone the top ones. Fjord filled out the forms for a few smaller schools and sent them off without a second read, too occupied in swallowing down the pit in his stomach.

If more than one school would have taken him, he never found out. The day he got the first acceptance letter was the same day he booked a bus ticket, and never looked back. Waiting for alternatives, making a _choice…_ it just wasn’t something he could handle, at the time.

Theoretically, he was pursuing a Bachelor of Arts. In what, well… that was the question. He just… couldn’t pick. He’d taken every class under the sun, and he still couldn’t make up his mind. The deadline for declaring his major was about to come and go, and once again, he was paralyzed, treading water, with no idea how to find his way back to solid ground.

He wasn’t like Caleb, who was set on the field of theoretical mathematics since grade school, or even Beau, who took a while to make her choice, but had already happily switched her major from accounting to history by the end of her first year. Jester took as many random electives as Fjord, but everyone knew she was destined to be an artist, whether she ended up with a degree or not. Veth was single-mindedly focused on her chemistry; the only one in the group pursuing a Masters, she also held down a pharmacy job on the side while she saved up enough money to sponsor her husband and son to join her in Canada. Yasha worked too, though Fjord never found out what she ended up doing after the Shrine Circus stopped coming to town, and after Molly…

Well. After Molly.

The point was, even Yasha had found a focus in her limited evening classes, settling down into a certificate in musical performance after a great deal of badgering, once the student orchestra realized they’d secured the only harpist in town. 

Fjord didn’t know how to explain to them - his driven, wildly talented friends - that he was 30, and somehow still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. That any choice he made seemed like locking himself into a contract he’d never escape from, and that he wasn’t _ready._

And still, the same anxiety kept chasing itself around his head, worst on the days he spent with the youngest in their group, and saw how much they already knew.

Shouldn’t he have it all figured out by now?

Shouldn’t he _know?_

Fjord paused by one of the handwritten signs, desperate for a distraction. The English description, set between Anishnaabemowin and French translations, read “Hen of the Woods - good to eat!”. Below the sign was a cluster of white, billowing mushrooms perched on a decayed log. Intrigued, Fjord plucked a piece from one of the crumbly caps and brought it to his lips.

“What the fuck!?” 

Beau’s hand came out of nowhere, slapping the mushroom out of his fingers. 

“Hey!” he protested, glaring at Beau. 

“Do you want to _die?”_

He gestured at the sign. “It says ‘good to eat’!” 

“Dude, that looks like it was made by a fifth grader, and you’re going to eat some random mushrooms off the ground because a sign says so?”

“A fifth grader who can write in three languages?” he countered, but Beau was unmoved by his logic. 

“No more unsupervised play time for you.” She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him along to where Caleb was waiting a little up the path. “You have stickier fingers than Veth, I swear.”

“At least I didn’t get caught shoplifting last month!”

“At least _she_ has an excuse! You just like to put your hands where they don’t belong!” 

“Curiousity killed the cat,” added Caleb sagely as they arrived. Beau nodded at him, as though what he’d said was very profound.

“Fuck you both,” grumbled Fjord, but he consented to be folded back into the group, and dutifully stayed away from any mysterious mushroom patches for the rest of the day. 

* * *

They were more than halfway through the camping trip at this point, and Fjord realized, as he climbed into the truck and patted his chest to make sure the compass was still there, this was the third morning out of five that he was making a trip to the Visitor Centre. It seemed like a tad too many, but maybe that was his curse for having impatient friends, none of whom were willing to spend a whole two years on getting an Ontario driver’s license. 

Still, even though the weather was growing worse by the minute - they’d all awoken to the squeaky patter of raindrops against the slope of the tent, and an unpleasant chilly moisture seeping into the edges of their sleeping bags - he was actually kind of glad to be making the trip, and strangely grateful that the rest of the group was busy battening down the hatches against the coming storm, so he’d have an excuse to go alone. 

Despite Caleb’s claims that they wouldn’t need it, the compass really had come in handy yesterday. Somewhere during the latter half of their hike, Fjord had gotten the map turned upside down, and neither Beau nor Caleb noticed until they were completely off the beaten track. With such thick cloud cover, it was difficult to see the sun that would have let Caleb navigate, and that polished needle had been the only thing between them making it back before dark and spending the night camping out on the cold hard ground, with no way to tell their friends where they’d ended up. Jester would have been in fits, and worrying her like that seemed somehow worse than the prospect of sleeping in the woods.

Fjord wanted a chance to thank Caduceus properly. There was no reason he had to lend out something so personal just for the sake of a few unprepared campers, much less ones who’d already caused him trouble. And...

Fjord really thought he’d had his fill of camping at this point. By now, he knew every stone in the vicinity of their campsite, every step on the paths to the outhouse or the lake, and heard every song Beau’s discman and canvas folio of CDs had to offer. He was ready to be back in his apartment. As forlornly empty as the second bedroom might be, at least there he didn’t have to scrub dirt out of his toothbrush every morning, and check his underwear for nesting beetles before pulling them on. 

But somehow, in all of that homesickness, Caduceus had become the bright spot. He was the last mystery left to uncover, the last rock left unturned, and Fjord was… he didn’t know what he was. Curious, maybe. That didn’t seem like a strong enough word for the anticipation in his chest, that only grew as he took the narrow dips and bends through the trees, but he didn’t have a better one.

A ripple of thunder spread across the sky, not far off, and the rain turned from a mild spattering to a heavy downpour within seconds of him pulling into the clearing. After considering the parking spots by the entrance, he reversed and pulled in under a tree instead, one he hoped would shelter the truck from the worst of the torrent. He’d accidentally sideswiped a guardrail a few months back, which had thankfully saved them all from going over a cliff into the lake below, but the impact had left sheared scratches in the truck’s body. He didn’t have the money to repaint it yet, and Fjord didn’t want to give the rust already flourishing along the naked gouges any more encouragement.

He dashed from the truck to the door, his arms over his head to ward off the fat raindrops so at least his hair wouldn’t be a waterlogged mess when he arrived. He pushed open the door, looking forward to seeing that same pleasant smile again, warm and welcoming amidst the chill.

And Caduceus was there alright, seated behind the desk, but instead a smile at Fjord’s entrance, he looked up with a look of… unease? Apprehension? Whatever it was, it wasn’t happiness, and Fjord’s own excitement withered in his chest. 

Had… Caduceus not wanted him to come after all? Had he misheard?

“Uh… hi,” he said, smoothing back his hair with one hand. Despite his efforts, the front was still sopping wet, and he was sure he looked like an idiot, standing there half-soaked in the middle of a storm. He didn’t know why it mattered what Caduceus thought of him, but it _did,_ more than he cared to admit. “I, uh-”

Caduceus stood, rounding the desk. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said gravely, and Fjord swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. Yeah, he must have misheard then, or misinterpreted- god, how fucking _embarrassing,_ assuming that Caduceus wanted to see him four days in a row-

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I just… I wanted to make sure you got your compass back.” Any thoughts of florid, heartfelt thanks were out the window. Now he just wanted to get back into his truck and drive away, and find an excuse to make someone else do the snack runs from now on. “I can just- _here.”_ He pulled out the leather cord and held it out to Caduceus, unable to keep the desperation out of his voice. Caduceus paused, just staring at him, as they held their respective breaths across the room.

Then another crash of thunder boomed, and all the lights went out. 

“Shit!” muttered Fjord as he cast around for a wall in the sudden darkness. His hand found a pamphlet stand, and he held on for dear life.

“There goes the generator,” came Caduceus’s ghostly voice, floating from the other side of the room. “I was afraid that would happen.” His voice was getting louder, and Fjord instinctually moved towards it, till he could just make out what he thought might be the tall shape of the man standing in the middle of the room and staring up at the empty ceiling, where the overhead lamp had been flickering only moments before. 

“Will you be alright here?” Fjord asked. He walked forward another couple steps, but misjudged the distance between them. Their arms brushed, and Fjord jumped back, the apology lost in his throat.

“Oh, yes. This happens every so often. I have candles.” 

“Good,” said Fjord, still not liking the idea of leaving someone stranded and alone during a power outage, but not really seeing the alternative. It’s not like he was a mechanic; he couldn’t magically make all the lights come back on again. “Uh.” He searched around for Caduceus’s arm again, feeling down once his fingers touched fabric until he found his palm, where he pressed the compass. Caduceus’s hand clasped around his own, his long fingers closing over both the compass and Fjord’s icy skin. Fjord wasn’t a big man, but his hand had never felt _dwarfed_ like this, in someone else’s grasp. With only touch and not sight to go by, Caduceus’s hand felt infinitely vast around his own. He sucked in a breath, that same embarrassment at the sight of the broomstick skirt rising to his cheeks, and he couldn’t name the reason for his blush, but he… he didn’t pull his hand away, either.

The heavy rainfall on the roof changed abruptly to something sharper, biting little sounds that quickly became heavy _thunks_ , and Caduceus startled, dragging his hand and the compass away in one smooth motion. Fjord followed the sound of his light footsteps, both comforted and disappointed to have the strange spell of darkness broken by the sudden flooding of grey light as Caduceus flung the door open. 

Outside, the world had become a sea of white, as hailstones the size of golfballs rained down onto the ground. 

“I’m sorry I dragged you out into this,” Caduceus murmured, soft beneath the pounding hail. “I wish I had given you a walkie-talkie, so I could have warned you not to come in.”

“It’s my bad. I should have checked the weather before I left.” Fjord leaned out slightly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the state of his truck, but Caduceus grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back inside.

“That’s a good way to get a concussion,” he warned. “This is only going to get worse.”

“...Shit.” Caduceus was probably right. Already, he was dreading the idea of running out into the middle of that, not to mention the damage the hail might do to his truck if he tried to drive back to the campsite.

Caduceus left the doorway and returned a moment later with an apple crate, which he used to prop it open enough to let in a bit of natural light. Then he stood and turned to Fjord.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

* * *

The little enclosure behind the curtain was dark, but not _so_ dark after Caduceus lit a few candles and scattered them across the various flat surfaces at their disposal. There was a little kitchenette with a sink and a hotplate where a kettle whistled away as Caduceus prepared two mugs.

Fjord wasn’t a tea person - he generally preferred a strong cup of black coffee every morning, mostly because that’s also what Vandran tended towards - but he couldn’t help but breathe deeply as Caduceus set the steaming mug in front of him. The scent was earthy and fresh, and the pottery warmed his hands as he held it up to his lips. 

“It’s good,” he said after taking a small sip. Honestly, mostly what he tasted was _burning -_ he definitely should have let it cool off a bit first - but he smiled through the pain as Caduceus beamed at the compliment.

“I’m glad.”

The little table was barely big enough for the two of them, and Fjord had to tuck his feet beneath his chair to keep their knees from knocking. He took another sip, relishing the mild pain, since it kept the now constant embarrassment around Caduceus in check. He was always grateful for a distraction. 

“I hope your friends thought to take shelter as well,” Caduceus mused. Fjord startled. Fuck. In his own situation, he’d forgotten that a tent wasn’t much good against jagged chunks of ice. He made to stand up from the table, ready to drive back right now, concussions be damned, but Caduceus grabbed his hand and pulled him back down and he… he went. “Beau seemed to have a good head on her shoulders. I’m sure you don’t need to worry.”

“I hope you’re right,” he murmured, still eyeing the door through the crack in the curtain.

“And besides, I doubt they’d want you getting hurt just to check on them.”

His hand was still on the back of Fjord’s. As Fjord glanced down, Caduceus seemed to notice as well, and quickly drew his fingers back, folding them around his own mug.

“Thank you for bringing the compass back, by the way. I really appreciate that you took the time.”

“Oh, uh, no problem.” Fjord gripped his mug, mirroring Caduceus’s posture. “Thanks again for lending it. It really came in handy.”

“I’m glad,” Caduceus said again, and took a sip of his tea. As he set it down, a little of the murky liquid sloshed onto the table. Were his hands shaky? They hadn’t seemed that way when he was weaving the day before.

“So you really are the only person who works here?” Fjord asked. He didn’t want the atmosphere to grow too heavy, and give the worry about his friends space to creep back in. 

“There are a few seasonal gate attendants, but they mostly stay in the next town over, and come in in the morning. I’m the only one who lives in the park itself. Somebody needs to keep an eye on things overnight.”

“That seems like a lot of work. When do you _sleep?”_

“Here and there.” Caduceus shrugged. “We don’t get a lot of campers at a time, so it’s easy to catch up during the day.”

“Ever thought about hiring someone else, to help?” Fjord took another sip. Now that the tea had cooled somewhat, he could appreciate the flavour. It had more body than most he’d tried - maybe because there were little bits of loose leaf floating around in the water, unlike the gas station orange pekoe bags he was used to - and a richer flavour. 

He could get used to this.

Caduceus sat in silence for a long moment before answering, and Fjord worried that he’d overstepped some hidden boundary. He was halfway to brushing off the question under a new one when Caduceus finally answered.

“Actually, there used to be a lot of us who worked here. My whole family, in fact.”

“Really?” Fjord sat forward, intrigued. “How many?”

“Seven, including myself. My parents, my aunt, and three siblings.”

“Wow.” Fjord’s group home had had about that many people, depending on the time of year, but he would never have called them a _family._ He tried to picture it, but all he could see were seven Caduceus’s of various heights and ages, all with pink hair and long skirts. Endearing, but probably not accurate.

“It was certainly crowded.” Caduceus chuckled. “And me and my brothers and sisters probably made about as much trouble as the campers, back then. I doubt we were much help to our parents.” 

“But now it’s just you?” Fjord asked tentatively, suddenly nervous that the answer would be something awful, like a horrific accident that had left Caduceus the only survivor. 

Caduceus nodded. “The rest of them moved away over the years.”

“What made you decide to stay?”

Caduceus smiled, an expression Fjord had been hoping to draw out again, but his eyes were a bit too sad to be comforting. “Somebody had to.”

Fjord swallowed. “Yeah. Makes sense.”

“...I suppose it does.”

Caduceus looked off towards the door again, falling silent. It gave Fjord a chance to catch his breath. Here in the flickering candlelight, Caduceus’s solemn honesty was overwhelming. The flicker of flame caught in the bracelets on his slender wrists, the exposed skin of his shoulder. Fjord wanted to say something else, but his words felt heavy in his mouth, mired in an accent that wasn’t his own. The Newfie tinge on his words - a split-second decision the first time a professor had called on him in class - was as much a lie as any other he’d ever told: a mask to hide behind, when the British lilt he’d picked up from his first foster parents would have set him apart even more from his far-younger classmates. Vandran was a born and bred Newfoundlander, even if he worked from PEI, and why wouldn’t Fjord want that too - an accent that spoke of community, and belonging?

But sitting here, with a man he barely knew, who still told Fjord something about himself that obviously pained him deeply just because Fjord asked - he felt the dishonesty in his voice like a blade through his chest. He didn’t think Caduceus was the type of person to judge him, or treat him differently just because Fjord was _different._ He was so different himself - with his hair, and his clothes, and the way he carried himself. Caduceus was made up of a collection of things that Fjord hadn’t realized a man could _be,_ and he didn’t seem ashamed about any of it.

He thought he understood now, the embarrassment he felt on Caduceus’s behalf - Fjord _would_ have been ashamed. He still flinched at the memory of the first time he cried in front of his schoolmates, and had the word ‘fag’ flung his direction. Even if he hadn’t known what that meant yet, he got the message loud and clear: any trace of femininity was going to get him hurt. He already had enough bullies in his life; he didn’t need to give them anything else to chew on.

Molly had asked once, before he died, if he could dye Fjord’s hair in their little apartment sink. He’d lied then too, and said he didn’t want to stain the countertop, not that he was terrified of what the people on the street would say about him. Of what they already said about Molly: his piercings and tight clothing, and the purple streaks in his hair.

Those things might have been true about Molly - probably _were_ true about Molly - but not Fjord. Not that he was judging, it’s just... it wasn’t like-

_He_ wasn’t-

...He’d been quiet too long.

“I didn’t have a family, growing up,” Fjord found himself saying. The blush only bloomed brighter, and he already regretted opening his mouth, but he couldn’t stop now that he’d started. “My parents… I don’t know what happened to them. Died, maybe, or just didn’t have the money to raise a kid. Got bounced between foster parents and group homes a lot. My friends are probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real family.” He pursed his lips, listening to the hail crashing against the roof, and praying to whatever was listening that that family found shelter from the storm. 

“That’s really nice,” said Caduceus, and again, from anyone else the words might have sounded dismissive. But from him, they were genuine, and Fjord’s heart gave another pang. 

Fjord shifted. His knee bumped into Caduceus’s. He let it linger there, not pulling it away like he should, and he didn’t know why. 

He tried, so hard, not to know _why._

“It is,” he said, clearing his throat. That damned lump was back again. “It really is.”

“I don’t really have friends,” Caduceus whispered. “I don’t meet people, out here.” His knee twitched against Fjord’s. There was still tea in the mug clenched between his hands, and Fjord’s mouth had never been so dry, but he couldn’t bring himself to take a sip. “I’m glad I met you, Fjord.”

“Yeah,” said Fjord, just as quietly. “Me too.”

Caduceus abruptly stood, moving to refill his mug. His knee pulled away from Fjord’s, leaving a lingering spot of warmth on the inside of his thigh. Fjord wondered at the ways he could initiate a touch again, without being discovered. Then he realized what he was wondering, and pulled his legs fully below the chair, where they were safe from any careless impulses from a body he couldn’t seem to control as well as his mind.

“So,” said Caduceus as he sat again. “What do you do, when you’re not camping in the woods?”

_Like a captain steering us back to calmer waters._ Fjord gratefully took the out from the intensity of their previous conversation. “I’m a student - my friends and I all go to school together - but I do construction work in the summers. Union stuff, mostly.” He didn’t elaborate further, not really wanting to admit that he spent less time building houses, and more time standing by the side of a highway, slowly turning a sign from ‘Stop’ to ‘Slow’ and back again every few minutes. 

_Not like I’m qualified for much else,_ he thought, feeling embarrassed once more. Beau had secured an internship at the university library, working in the microfiche archives, Jester sold her work at the Farmer’s Market, Veth had all the qualifications to work a proper, grownup job, Yasha did… whatever Yasha did, and Caleb was too busy with preparing his thesis to focus on anything else by school. They all had something to work towards in service of what they wanted to do with their lives, and he just… worked.

“What do you study at school?”

He should have seen the question coming, but it still left Fjord blindsided, scrambling for anything to say that wasn’t _I have no fucking idea._ He found that he desperately wanted Caduceus to think well of him, and he couldn’t just explain that he was 30 and he had no concrete ambition, or plans for the future. 

After too long a pause, he mumbled, “Astronomy.”

Caduceus raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Y-yup. Stars and shit, that’s my jam.”

Caduceus raised a hand to his jaw, stroking at the light fuzz on his chin. “I knew they had an observatory in town.” He smiled, pleased with the answer. “That’s really neat, Fjord.”

God, if only he deserved Caduceus’s impressed expression. Instead, his stomach roiled with guilt over having lied, _again._ He’d taken one first year class in Astronomy - _one_ \- and he’d fallen asleep in half the lectures. The only constellations he knew were the ones Vandran had pointed out to him in his first few years at sea, but even those had faded in his memory, leaving him with nothing but vague impressions of patterns of light in the night sky.

“How about you?” Fjord said before Caduceus had a chance to ask any followup questions. “What do you do when the park’s not open?”

Was it just his imagination, or did Caduceus’s expression grow a tad uncomfortable as well? “The park’s open year round. That means I’m here the whole year too.”

“Don’t you ever get bored of the woods?” Fjord couldn’t imagine spending his whole life out here - never getting to see a movie, running water from a pump, the _bugs…_ “Ever think about giving town life a try?”

“I’m very happy here,” Caduceus intoned, no longer quite meeting Fjord’s eyes. Curious at the change in posture, Fjord leaned forward, hoping to draw out something more, but Caduceus leaned away and tilted his ear towards the ceiling. “I think it’s slowing up.”

Caduceus stood and wandered through the fabric partition, leaving Fjord alone at the table to wonder what just happened, whether he’d said something wrong. But thankfully Caduceus returned a few moments later, seeming at ease once more. “Come see.”

Fjord followed him to the door. He peered outside onto the whitened landscape, where a spattering of rain was slowly beginning to melt the hail. The pellets were small enough now that they looked more like snowflakes than ice, and when Fjord stuck his hand out to catch a few they tickled his skin, rather than stung.

“I guess I should head back while it’s slow, in case it starts up again.” He was reluctant to leave the shelter of the building, but his worry about his friends’ safety was hard to ignore. 

Still, he hesitated on the stoop, unwilling to step out and leave his and Caduceus’s conversation where it ended, something still unfinished hanging in the air. They were all going home in a few days, so if the two of them left it here now, that’s _all_ that would be left: just Fjord’s lies, and Caduceus’s discomfort, and a conversation cut short by the changing of the weather. None of that was what he wanted to finish his vacation on.

Fjord cast about for anything, _anything,_ to delay the goodbye for just a few minutes more. HIs eyes landed on a long shadow, cast across the pebbled ground by the faint light that was beginning to push past the clouds. The canoe.

“Hey,” Fjord said. “I know you said you didn’t get to take it out much, but… if you ever wanted to go canoeing… I mean, I’ve never actually done it, but I can- I can hold a paddle right way up. I think.” He started to mime the motion, then realized exactly how ridiculous he looked and dropped his arms back to his sides. “Only if you wanted to.”

Caduceus was staring at him. Fjord blushed, looking back towards his truck and mentally calculating the distance, and how long it would take to reach it at a full sprint. “Or not, totally fine-”

“I’d love that.” His voice was surprised, though Fjord couldn’t tell if it was because the possibility of taking the boat out hadn’t occurred to him in a while, or that it was Fjord who suggested it. “When are you free?”

“I mean,” he said, rubbing his neck again. They had jumped from a theoretical to making concrete plans at a pace he frankly wasn’t equipped to handle. “A-anytime, I guess. My friends and I leave on Friday.”

“It’s Wednesday now,” Caduceus mused. “But I don’t trust the weather today. How about tomorrow evening? Meet me here at nine?”

“Sure.” Fjord swallowed around the word. “Yeah. Great. Awesome.”

Caduceus nodded. “See you then.”

“Right. See you. Just gonna-” he pointed towards his truck. “Gonna make a run for it.”

“Good luck.”

“...Thanks.”

He took off in a dash through the rain, grateful for the cold water at last washing away the heat from his cheeks. 

At least once he was back on the trail, he had a purpose - making sure the others were alright - to keep his mind off the terror of what he’d just agreed to (what he’d just _suggested,_ his treacherous brain reminded him). That was tomorrow’s problem. For today, he just wanted to get back to his friends as soon as possible.

His heart clenched as he rolled into view of the campsite. The tent was fully collapsed, with jagged tears where the metal poles had ripped straight through the canvas. The firepit was scattered with two types of white now: ash and ice intermingled.

His friends were nowhere in sight. 

“Beau!” Fjord emerged from the truck already shouting, not bothering to shut the door as he raced trhough the abandoned site. “Jester! Veth!” No sound, not even birdcalls. His words echoed through the trees uselessly, and he sucked in another breath, preparing to call again.

A head of blue hair popped up above the line of rock where he and Yasha had told ghost stories only a few nights before.

“Fjord?”

Jester’s voice quavered in the middle, and he didn’t have time to respond before her short frame scrambled over the top of the rock and pelted towards him. She flung her arms around his middle, squeezing him with all her considerable might as she sobbed, “Oh my gosh, Fjord, are you alright? We were so _worried-”_

“I’m fine, Jess. I promise, I’m fine.” He found himself getting a little choked up too, especially as he saw more heads emerge from behind the rock: all his friends, safe and sound.

“Where did you _go?”_

“I was going to drop something off at the Visitor Centre, but I got stuck there when the hail started.” He carefully didn’t mention _who_ he had been stuck there with, fearing Jester’s curiousity would raise questions he couldn’t answer.

“I’m so glad you’re safe, Fjord.” Jester pressed her head into his chest again, and he brushed his fingers over her hair. 

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Me too.” He glanced back at the dilapidated tent as the others started to gather around them. “Good thing you guys didn’t try to stay in there.”

“Yasha told us we should hide under the rock until it got better.” Fjord spared a grateful nod to Yasha over Jester’s shoulder.

“Smart move.” Yasha tilted her head in response.

“That’s the craziest storm I’ve ever seen,” Beau said, kicking at the downed poles. “Damn. It’s going to take ages to fix this. Didn’t happen to see any spare tents for sale at the shop while you were holed up there?”

“‘Fraid not.” Jester finally let him go as Veth called her over, having produced a small sewing kit from god knows where, and the two began to consult about repair plans. The damage was bad, but it didn’t look unfixable - which meant, hopefully, they wouldn’t have to cut their trip short.

_...Hopefully?_

When did he decide that he actually wanted to see this trip through? A day ago, he would have been overjoyed to be headed home early.

Well. He knew when. He just didn’t know how to parse it - why he was looking towards tomorrow evening with so much anticipation, and why the thought of standing Caduceus up was even worse than the dread already coiling in his stomach that he’d done something wrong by asking.

Sighing, Fjord tried to push the newfound worry to the side. With limbs that were already exhausted, he began to help Beau dig the tentpole stakes out of the ground.

* * *

They all slept under the stars that night, curled up in a huddle on top of the flat sheet that used to be a tent, and quaking in their sleeping bags as the dampness soaked up from the ground into their bones. Fjord pretended not to notice when Veth crept into Caleb’s sleeping bag after less than an hour of tossing and turning. It wasn’t his business, and besides, it’s not like the rest of them hadn’t done something like that before. There were definitely nights, back in his first year, where they’d managed to fit five people into Jester and Beau’s two single beds - him and Molly in one, Jester and Beau in the other, and Yasha sprawled out across the floor between the two, keeping vigil over the door like a slumbering giant. Caleb and Veth were still a new addition to the group, but he’d get used to their habits soon enough. It was just one more quirk to add to the list.

The morning came too soon, after too few hours of restless sleep, but they all got up when the sunlight couldn’t be ignored, except for Beau, who Yasha and Jester lifted and carried off to another corner of the campsite to snore the morning away in peace, rather than risk her ire at being awoken early. 

Yasha left again, supposedly to gather more food. Their cooler was another unfortunate casualty of the hailstorm; its lid had cracked, leaving most of the store-bought ice to melt away. They’d also found the bags of bread and cereal they’d tied up in trees in the hope it would keep prowling bears from sniffing around their campsite strewn across the ground, in tatters. While they salvaged enough to last their final two days, a bit of extra meat to add to the pile wouldn’t go wrong.

Caleb excused himself to work on his paper once he realized there weren’t enough needles to go around, which left Fjord, Jester, and Veth huddled in a circle, trying to mend the worst of the damage to the tent.

Jester and Veth debated whether they should add some extra embroidery patterns to the fabric, since they were sewing it up anyways, and Fjord debated how on earth he was going to manage to sneak away tonight.

He could just tell them where he was going. Hell, he could tell them right now. Jester and Veth were right there. _Hey,_ he’d say, _so I’m planning to go hang out with Caduceus tonight. No biggie, just going to take a canoe out onto the lake in the middle of the night with a guy I’ve spoken to, like, three times. I promise he’s not a serial killer, which I definitely know because, again, three whole times!_

Yeah, that would go over well.

What he _really_ didn’t want was one of his friends inviting themselves along. The thought of showing up with someone else on his heels made his skin crawl. Caduceus had agreed to hang out with _him,_ he hadn’t agreed to spend the night babysitting Fjord’s friends as well. But if one of the others asked to come, how could he say no? How could he explain that he didn’t want them to come? That he wanted… 

That he wanted the evening to just be the two of them. 

“Fjord, let me help you.” 

Jester leaned over and plucked the needle from his hand, expertly threading the string he’d been struggling with for the past few minutes through its eye. 

“Thanks, Jessie.” She handed it back to him with a grin, then went back to arguing with Veth over whether flowers or dicks would be a better addition to their design. 

He could tell Jester, right? She would understand. She would _have_ to understand. Even after two years of school, she was still the person who knew him best. 

Jester was the first friend he made after arriving in the new and alien land of Ontario. After three months of trying to say as little as possible, to blend in as much as he could in an environment made for students ten years younger, he couldn’t believe his ears when he heard a rousing, off-kilter rendition of ‘Barett’s Privateers’ drifting across the dining hall. At the source of the sound was a blue-haired girl, seemingly unconcerned that nobody else was singing along to the melody… the one that Fjord knew, but hadn’t heard, since leaving the Maritimes. 

He’d picked up the chorus in a soft, unsure voice, and he’ll never forget how wide Jester’s smile grew as she spotted the second singer: like her whole face was the sun, filled with so much joy that she couldn’t contain the rapture inside of her. She was a Maritimer too, he learned over the next few days, during long strolls and shared meals and the gaps between tutorials and science labs. Her mother’s house overlooked the Halifax harbour; a year earlier, they would have been living less than four hours apart. 

Of course, it hadn’t all been smooth sailing to where they were now. Jester had had a crush on him at the start, which he’d tried to subtly discourage. He was sure a lot of men his age would have loved the attention from the younger girl, but he felt every year of their age difference keenly and… the spark just wasn’t there, if he was honest. He didn’t know why, but he just couldn’t see her in that way. 

Thankfully, Jester’s vacant dorm room bed was filled with a late transfer partway through the year, and once Jester and Beau became inseparable, her interest in Fjord seemed to wane. It made it so much easier to just be _friends -_ comfortable in each others’ presence, able to share anything without hesitation. He’d told her secrets he’d never told anyone before. She alone knew his true accent, and she alone knew the circumstances of Vandran’s death.

So why couldn’t he tell her this?

Fjord looked instead to Veth, who currently had both her and Jester’s needles clenched between her teeth in a precarious way that made Fjord’s throat prickle. 

At least he was certain of one thing: he couldn’t tell Veth. He liked her well enough, but she enjoyed poking fun at him, and as fond as those jabs might be, he was already nervous enough about tonight without her prodding at the wound. And she was… well, she was _old-fashioned,_ his mind kept reminding him, again and again. She wouldn’t get it, even though there was nothing to _get,_ because he and Caduceus weren’t even _doing_ anything, so why did it _matter-_

“Fjord!”

A sharp pain pricked through the spiralling motion of his thoughts, and he looked down to find he’d accidentally driven his needle into the bed of his thumb. A bit of red oozed out as he withdrew the sharp point. It barely hurt, but Jester and Veth both sprang to action immediately. 

“I’ll get alcohol!” Veth called as Jester shouted after her to grab her backpack too, then Jester shuffled over to Fjord and took his hand in her own. She tsked, turning it over but finding no other punctures in his skin.

“You need to be more careful.”

Veth was gone, fetching first aid supplies. 

They were alone, just him and Jester. He could tell her. He could just _tell_ her.

...Tell her what?

That he wanted to be alone with Caduceus? 

That when their legs brushed, he wanted to leave his there? That his hair was so long, and it made Fjord want to know what it would feel like, to let his own grow? 

That once or twice, before everything that happened, he’d caught himself staring at Molly, just _staring_ at him, and the realization terrified him so much that he avoided the apartment for days afterwards?

That sometimes, he’d almost thought-

Almost _let_ himself think-

Fjord pulled his hand out of Jester’s, too roughly. “It’s _fine,_ Jester,” he snapped. She stared at him in shock. 

“...Ok.” Her voice had gone quiet. “I just don’t want you to get an infection, ok? It would be really bad, out here, if you did that.”

Fjord swallowed, feeling like every bit of the asshole he was. 

“Sorry. You’re right. You’re right. I’m just… I’m just tired.” He held out his hand to her again with an apologetic half-smile. “Sorry.”

Jester’s face brightened, more quickly than he deserved. “It’s ok. I’m tired too.”

_And somehow, you manage never to take it out on anyone._

“Thanks,” he murmured, as Veth came darting up with the bottle of alcohol. He assumed it was of the rubbing variety, but the bottle was unmarked, so he wouldn’t betting his life on it.

“For what?” Jester pulled away, rummaging through the backpack Veth offered and emerging with a package of sparkly bandaids. A picture of a seahorse adorned one side of the box. 

“For always being there.”

Even if he couldn’t tell her about tonight, he meant it. 

And maybe, one day-

Well, probably not. Some things were better to keep to yourself. 

(But if he could tell anyone, it would be her.)

* * *

In the end, he lied, like he always did. He told the group he wanted to do one last drive around the campground, just to see any sights he missed before they left, and shrugged off Beau and Jester’s offers to accompany him. By eight-thirty, he was back on the narrow tire tracks, headed to the Visitor Centre for the last time. His palms were sweaty against the wheel. He rubbed them on the seat, and tried not to think too hard about anything.

Caduceus was waiting for him outside the door by the time he arrived, dressed in a loose tunic and capris, with two paddles already strapped to his back. The outfit was quite different from Fjord’s cargo shorts and layered tee and button down, but his rubber sandals could have been from any outdoorsy store.

“Glad you could make it,” Caduceus said as Fjord stepped out of the truck, his flashlight the only light in the clearing once Fjord’s headlights petered out.

“Of course.” 

He was glad of the immediate practical distraction, something to keep his hands busy, as Caduceus led him into the alley between buildings, and the two of them hoisted the canoe off its strats. Despite its size, the boat was shockingly light; it wasn’t difficult at all to get it down and ferry it back into the open space in front of the Visitor Centre.

“Are we taking my truck?” Fjord eyed his truckbed dubiously, the bow of the canoe still balanced above his head. He had ropes that he could use to secure it, but the canoe was easily five metres, and probably longer than that. He didn’t like the idea of something made with so much care sticking out while he drove through close brush and low-hanging branches. Too much responsibility, when it was already hard enough to keep his hands steady today.

“It’s not a long walk. Have you ever portaged a boat?”

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“Well, you’ve already started.” Caduceus tapped the side of the canoe lightly with his fingers. “We should switch positions, though. We’ll both be able to see better if I’m in front.”

Carefully, they set the canoe down on the gravel, then Caduceus moved ahead and they hoisted it up above their heads again. Caduceus was right - with the taller person in front, Fjord could balance the weight of the gunwale on his shoulder without having his view totally obscured by the hull. It also meant Caduceus could handle the actual navigating to the shore from his forward position, which was certainly better than Fjord leading them blindly through the dark.

They set off down a narrow trail through the trees towards the lake. Caduceus’s steps were sure, certain, like he’d walked the same path a thousand times before. Fjord was careful of every footfall at first, paranoid that a misstep might send the both of them crashing down. But every few minutes, Caduceus would give a command - ‘a little to the left’, ‘there’s a drop here’, ‘watch out for those branches’ - and by the end of the journey, Fjord felt secure enough to trust that Caduceus was watching the path for them both. That he wouldn’t let Fjord stumble, even if he couldn’t see where they were going.

They broke from the trees around ten o’clock. The tail of the crescent moon was already rippling in the dark water of the secluded bay. They stood on the edge of a rocky beach, untouched by picnic tables or litter. Driftwood lay in patches along the shore: their last obstacles to skirt before righting the boat and slipping its nose into the water. 

Fjord stood back, rubbing at the shoulder that had held the weight of the canoe. Though the boat wasn’t heavy, his arms still ached from almost an hour of holding them aloft. Caduceus didn’t seem much the worse for wear; he tossed one of the paddles into the bottom of the canoe with ease, then holding the other paddle, braced his free hand near the bow.

“Ready to go?”

This process, Fjord was familiar with - he may never have canoed, but he’d certainly launched a boat or two in his time. “Ready.”

“Hold it steady.” Caduceus stepped lightly into the centre of the bow, then knelt in between the wooden thwarts that spanned the width of the boat, resting the tip of his paddle in the shallow water. “Alright, push off.”

As Fjord heaved the boat forward, Caduceus levered the paddle into the gravel, and the boat shot out from the shore. Fjord quickly leaped aboard, trying not to overbalance as the canoe rocked beneath his feet. 

“Keep low,” Caduceus reminded him without glancing back, and Fjord sunk to his knees as well, trying to imitate Caduceus’s posture. 

“Got it.” 

As he settled into the bottom of the boat, the narrow frame righted itself, and Fjord felt much more stable. Much _less_ like he was about to tip over into the cold water. He grabbed the other paddle and, following Caduceus’s instructions, brought it down on the opposite side of the boat. Once Fjord had the hang of the rhythm, his paddle barely made a ripple as it dipped in and out of the water. Together, they made a steady course out towards the centre of the bay.

Between the dip of paddles and the gentle breeze across the water, Fjord was glad that Caduceus didn’t seem to feel the need to fill their quiet passage with conversation. It was nice enough to kneel peacefully together, listening to the simple sounds of nature, making easy motions, and drifting onward at a languid pace. The boat cut through the water with an elegant glide that barely broke the pattern of moonlight, and Fjord glanced out over the empty bay, watching the stars he almost wished he actually did study, mirrored above and below.

At last, Caduceus pulled his paddle back into the boat and balanced it on the edges behind him. Fjord tried to do the same, but couldn’t quite make the broad flat of the wood stay in place, so he slid his paddle back onto the floor of the boat instead. Caduceus stood up from his kneel, all of his height towering over the low edge of the canoe, and Fjord wondered at how he could keep so steady. The keel of the boat barely rocked as he got to his feet, whereas Fjord was sure that if he tried to stand, he’d send them both tumbling into the water.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, almost afraid of breaking the silence between them, but unable to keep his curiousity in line when Caduceus was searching the horizon so intently.

“There,” Caduceus said at last, pointing his finger out towards the far tip of the distant shore of the other side of the bay, still at least a kilometre off. “Do you see that rock?”

Fjord squinted. He could just make out a splash of grey among the dark green of the pines.

“I do.”

“My sisters and I used to play there, when we were younger. We’d take turns, seeing who could throw a branch the farthest, or light a fire the quickest.” He chuckled. “I pushed Calliope off it once. She was angry with me for weeks.”

“You said you had three siblings. Were they all girls?” Why that detail had stuck with Fjord, he didn’t know, but he still remembered it clearly. _Seven in my family. Three siblings._

Caduceus, his smile still present but fading by degrees, turned around and stepped over one of the thwarts. He sat down facing Fjord. Fjord took the opportunity to mirror his stance, shifting to a cross-legged position and giving his numb legs a break from the unaccustomed kneel. 

Where they were now, they were close enough that the light of the moon was all the illumination needed to make out Caduceus’s face in detail: a broad nose, soft eyes, loose waves of hair swept off to one side. 

Nothing but a single bar of wood separating them.

“No. But my brother… he preferred more serious things. He thought we didn’t take life seriously enough. I think he just didn’t like it when we got his hair wet, or his clothes dirty.”

“Sounds like he was missing out.”

“Hmm,” Caduceus hummed. “I thought so too, at the time.”

Somewhere beyond their sight, a fish lept and splashed back into the lake. The sound of thrashing brought to mind another, similar sound, and Fjord abruptly realized that this was the first time he’d been out on the water since Vandran died. 

He’d spent the past two years dreading the thought of getting on another boat, but something about this experience was so new, so unaccustomed, so _peaceful,_ that the bad memories just… hadn’t surfaced. It hadn’t even occurred to him to associate the two. It felt _safe_ out here, in a way he’d feared the water never would again. The bay wasn’t very deep, and he had the unshakeable feeling that even if they tipped, Caduceus wouldn’t let them sink. He’d find a way to right the boat, and there would be a hand waiting to pull him aboard. 

He wouldn’t be left out here, thrashing against the current, trying to keep the the ice from freezing his lungs until help arrived-

Fjord shuddered, a sudden chill running down his spine.

“Are you cold?” Caduceus asked, concerned. “I didn’t think to bring a blanket-”

“No, I’m fine. Just getting used to it.” He gestured vaguely at nothing, because there was nothing to point at, unless he could open up his skull and show Caduceus exactly where in his brain things had gone wrong. “I tend to run cold anyway.”

To Fjord’s surprise, Caduceus reached out and took his hand, squeezing his stiff fingers between his own. “You do,” he agreed, then took Fjord’s other hand and placed the two of them between his palms. Fjord stared, unable to move, as he began to move them back and forth, rubbing feeling back into his cold fingers. His hands were large enough to cover Fjord’s entirely; no trace of his own skin remained. Fjord’s face burned. 

The only person who had ever done something like this for him was Jester, and that… it wasn’t the same. It felt different. It all felt _different._

Fjord bit the inside of his cheek, looking down, while Caduceus’s hands continued to ferry warmth back into his bones. 

“Have you always run this cold?”

Fjord considered the question. He honestly wasn’t sure. He didn’t think so. But the Atlantic had gotten into his bones, the night the _Tide’s Breath_ sank, and he couldn’t seem to get it out of him. He still woke up most mornings with the taste of salt water in his mouth, with the ocean surrounding him, and Vandran… gone. 

On particularly dark nights, he’d wake up convinced that the nightmares were real: that he’d never been rescued, and that he was still floating out at sea, with nothing but blackness and bodies beneath.

“I guess,” he said, and winced the moment the words left his mouth. Why couldn’t he just tell the _truth?_ Here Caduceus was, pouring his heart out about the family he so clearly missed, and Fjord couldn’t even give him that much?

Fjord was the one who broke the touch, pulling his hands back into his lap. Comfort wasn’t allowed if he wasn’t giving anything back in return. He couldn’t - _shouldn’t_ \- expect others to take care of him. 

_Nobody cares about your problems as much as you._

Vandran’s voice was still with him, even if the man was gone.

“Is this where your family would canoe?” Fjord asked, looking down so he wouldn’t have to see what expression Caduceus wore. His hands still held the lingering memory of the touch, and he wrapped his arms around his middle, till he couldn’t feel their tingling anymore.

“Close to here - up and down the shore mostly.”

“Ever cross the lake in it?”

“No,” Caduceus replied. “It’s made for shallower water, not something that deep. A canoe like this is better in rivers and inlets than the open lake.” 

“Oh,” said Fjord. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Caduceus looked at him, too discerning, and Fjord turned his head away. His stomach felt heavy, like he’d eaten too much. Like he was going to be sick.

Caduceus reached out again, but then seemed to think better of it, because he brought his hand to rest on the side of the boat instead of Fjord’s shoulder. His head turned up to the side as well, but rather than looking down, he glanced up at the night sky. 

“Which is your favourite constellation?” Caduceus asked lightly. When Fjord didn’t respond, he continued, as though Fjord’s silence was just fine too. “Mine is Casseiopia. I find the symmetry really, quite beautiful.” Fjord still couldn’t speak, so Caduceus kept going. “If my parents had had another child, I would have asked them to choose that name.” 

He finally frowned, glancing back at Fjord with so much concern in his eyes that Fjord had no choice but to muster _something_ to say. He couldn’t take someone looking at him like that, not for long.

“The Big Dipper,” he forced out. He couldn’t think of a single other constellation, and of course, he had chosen the worst possible one to lie with. What kind of astronomy student picked the _Big Dipper_ as their favourite constellation? Caduceus was smart enough to pick up on that flub. Would undoubtedly call him out on it now. 

How fucking stupid could he be?

But all Caduceus said was, “I like that one too. Very useful. If you can see the north star, you’ll never lose your way.”

Fjord snorted mirthlessly, then put his arms on the thwart in front of him and laid his head down. Of course this guy would find the most poetic way possible to hit on Fjord’s central character flaw. Of _course_ Fjord had convinced Caduceus that he actually had some sense of direction in his life. He was just _that_ good at lying, huh? 

God, he hated himself some days.

“Fjord?” Caduceus’s murmur rumbled above his head. “Are you alright?” He snuffled again into his arms. “...Do you want to go back?” _Yes. No._ He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. “...Did I do something wrong?”

The genuine worry in Caduceus’s voice was enough to bring Fjord’s head up at last. However miserable Fjord was feeling, it wasn’t right to make Caduceus think it was his fault. 

“No,” he said forcefully. “No, it’s not- I promise, this is all me.”

Well, he’d already fucked this up beyond repair. He might as well finish it properly.

“...I lied to you,” he admitted quietly. “And I feel pretty damn stupid about it now.”

“Oh?” Caduceus cocked his head. “About what?”

“I’m not an astronomy major.” In for a penny- “I don’t even have a major.”

“...Then why did you tell me you were?” Caduceus’s voice had grown quiet too. Fjord didn’t look up, but he could imagine the hurt in his eyes.

“I don’t know.” Another lie. Try again. “I wanted you to think I was… I don’t know, _together._ Like I’d figured it all out. Not like I’m some 30 year old high school dropout who can’t make a goddamn choice about what he wants his life to look like. Which, I am. That’s exactly what I am.” 

It fucking hurt to say it, but his chest still felt lighter when he finished. At least if Caduceus decided he wanted nothing to do with Fjord now, he could go home feeling like he hadn’t _tricked_ someone into spending time with him, by being someone better than he was. He still felt that way enough with his own friends to tide him over for a lifetime. “Sorry. I know that was real shitty of me.”

When Fjord finally gathered the courage to meet his eyes again, he found Caduceus’s absent of anger or frustration. Instead, they were wide, and insistent, and so much younger than they were before.

“You don’t have to be ashamed, Fjord,” he said, almost desperate. “Plenty of people don’t know where their lives are going.”

“You do,” Fjord replied miserably. “You said you were happy here.”

“...I’m not,” Caduceus whispered, too much space between the words, like they were being wrung from an unwilling throat. “Fjord, I… lied to you, too.”

“What?” Fjord breathed, so surprised that he leaned forward, forgetting his own trepidation.

“My family is gone. My parents travel for most of the year with my aunt. Calliope left for the States five years ago on a sports scholarship. My brother Colton? He’s a Rhode Scholar, studying philosophy at Oxford. Clarabelle?” Caduceus’s voice grew more ragged by the final syllable of her name. “She- she’s going to change the world one day, I know it. And I’m… here. I’m still _here._ My brothers and sisters, they know who they are and what they’re meant to do with their lives and I have no idea who I am, where I’m supposed to be. But someone has to be here, so here I am. Just… _here,_ watching the plants grow and die and grow again. And nothing ever changes.”

“You don’t want to be here?” Fjord said, still trying to wrap his mind around the flurry of information. How it would feel, to actually have a family, only to be left behind.

“I’m supposed to… to want to. My family has always been here. We watch over this place. We always have.”

“...But they’re not here now.”

“No. They’re not here now.”

Fjord felt the ice water at his throat again, mingled with the memory of harsh whispers, of days spent eating his lunch alone, till he learned to stop going to the cafeteria and scarfed his sandwich down beneath the eaves of the high school gymnasium. “It must be lonely,” he whispered. “Being here by yourself.”

“I’m good at being alone,” Caduceus said, and this time when their eyes met again, they could both see the lie, plain as day. Caduceus’s small smile was self-deprecating, and he breathed out and corrected himself. “Maybe not as good as I used to be.”

That feeling, Fjord knew all too well. “You could always go,” he suggested. “Nobody would stop you.”

“Maybe,” Caduceus said. “Maybe,” and he didn’t sound convinced, but he did sound thoughtful, and a little less resigned than before.

A long wail pierced the quiet night, and Fjord nearly startled out of his skin, rocking the canoe so much that even Caduceus had to hunch to keep his balance. _Just a loon, just a stupid bird,_ Fjord reminded himself, even as his wide eyes were dragged back to the shore, praying he wouldn’t see a lantern bobbing in the darkness.

“What is it?” Caduceus twisted his body to look in the same direction, at the same nothingness Fjord couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from.

“Nothing. Just- just some ghost story my friend told me.” Well, if it was honesty hour, he might as well fess up to this too. What else did he have to lose? “I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat, to be honest. Can’t quite get it out of my head.”

“Tell me.” Caduceus sat up, eyes suddenly bright and interested. “I really enjoy ghost stories.”

_Of course you do._

“Uh,” he said, trying to remember the broad strokes of the story Yasha had told him, and not just the little details that kept him up at night. “Right, so, supposedly there’s this drowned sailor that’s haunting the lake. His ship went down in sight of land, or the port, I guess, and he goes searching along the shore every night with a lantern, looking for someone to help him save his ship. But I guess he never found anyone, since he’s still out there.” Fjord laughed nervously. It wasn’t quite as haunting a tale when it wasn’t Yasha’s low voice doing the telling - nearly everything she said sounded vaguely ominous, no matter how innocent - but he still shivered, looking past Caduceus to the shore. “Creepy, right?”

“I actually think it’s rather nice.”

Fjord blinked. “Nice?”

“Mhm. It’s an admirable story, don’t you think?”

“Uh,” Fjord fumbled. “Not… not really? What do you mean, admirable?”

“Well,” said Caduceus. “That sailor must be very brave, to keep on searching every night. To keep on asking for help, even if no one has answered before.” Caduceus’s voice grew quieter. “I want to be that strong too.”

_Strong._

Ice water at his throat, and bodies below, and the same thought, night after night. 

_Why can’t I save myself? Why aren’t I strong enough, to pull myself to shore?_

“Do you see what I mean?”

Fjord nodded. He couldn’t speak, but he nodded, and nodded again. He did.

“Yeah,” Fjord said, when his throat finally unclosed. “You… you have a really unique way of looking at things, don’t you?”

Caduceus laughed softly. “I didn’t used to think so.”

They fell silent for a long time after that, a comfortable sort of quiet that didn’t need filling. Without the weight of the lies on his chest, Fjord could sit back and enjoy the gentle lapping of the water against the hull, and the stars that only twinkled and didn’t mock him for not knowing their names. 

But eventually, Caduceus spoke again.

“I told you one more lie.”

“Hmm?” Fjord sat back up, giving Caduceus his full attention. “What’s that?”

“The compasses. We had more for sale, in the shop. We weren’t sold out.”

Caduceus’s words were slow, and soft, but Fjord’s heart was beating out of his chest.

“Yeah?” was all he could think to say. Caduceus leaned closer, so close that Fjord could smell the pine in his hair - not like shampoo, or the little tree air freshener hanging above Fjord’s dash, but something real, and fed by the open air.

“I wanted to give you my compass, so that you would come back.”

The sentence hung, breathless, in the small space between them. Fjord stared, wide-eyed, as the inexplicable urge to cry stung at the back of his eyes. It wasn’t sadness he felt, but he was… _moved._ So, so overcome by the simple honesty in Caduceus’s voice. 

He had wanted Fjord to come back, so he could see him again.

He _wanted_ Fjord to come back, and Fjord wanted…

They were so close, and there was no one here on the lake with them, and Fjord’s eyes slid down the length of Caduceus’s wide nose, his smooth lips, the wisps of hair at his jaw, and he wanted-

He wanted to kiss him. 

The barrier finally broke, the realization flooding in, of a thought he’d had before, and had been too afraid to see for what it was. That thought had drowned in the laughter of Vandran’s crew, over yet another joke about a man who wanted to be like a woman, it was buried beneath the schoolyard teasing and casual slurs, it was burned in the picketed signs outside the churches, as the government gave an answer to the marriage question that people couldn’t accept. He felt sick. He felt terrified. He felt like he would die, if he didn’t lean forward and-

The moment faded in the length of Fjord’s indecision, flickering out while the rapid pace of his heart remained a steady beat in his palms and his jaw. He couldn’t make himself move, and so Caduceus moved away, picking up his paddle and turning back towards the front of the boat. Fjord caught a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes as well, and indecision… and regret. 

What had he been thinking, as he waited for the response Fjord never gave?

Did he want the same things as Fjord?

Was it too late, for both of them?

“It’s getting late. We should go back.”

“Yeah. We probably should.” He winced as the words came out - still not in his own voice, still not the ones he wanted to say, but he was too afraid to do anything else.

The trip back to shore was an awkward one. Both of them knew that something had happened, and hadn’t happened, and neither could acknowledge it out loud. The return to the Visitor Centre was just as quiet, though at least with the huffing and puffing of the uphill climb, they had an excuse not to talk. 

Plausible deniability. Fjord was all too accustomed to the concept.

They put the canoe back up on the slats, and then there was nothing between him and Caduceus to hide behind. It was just the two of them, standing there in the dark, with eager moths fluttering around the single point of light in Caduceus’s hand. 

“Well… goodnight,” said Caduceus. 

And Fjord had no idea what to say back. _Thanks for the best conversation I’ve had in a long time? Sorry that I fucked it up at the end? Sorry that you chose me to reach out to, and I’m too much of a coward to reach back?_

The light swung between them, jittering at his feet. Unsteady hands, again. He couldn’t see Caduceus’s face anymore - just the light, swaying…

“I’m glad you lied,” Fjord said, so quiet even he could barely make out his own words. “I wanted to see you again too.”

He heard, but didn’t see, Caduceus’s small intake of breath. He heard, but didn’t see, his feet moving forward, and his head dipping low. Then there was the scent of pine again, and soft hair at his throat, longer than his own. 

So long as it was in the dark, he could bring himself to close the distance. Plausible deniability. In the morning, he could say that he meant to whisper something else into Caduceus’s ear. That the skin his lips found instead was an accident, or a trick of the light. That the hesitant kiss he pressed to the corner of Caduceus’s mouth was a brush, a fumble. Unintentional. A mistake. He might even be able to convince himself of it, if he tried hard enough. 

He suspected he would be trying by the time morning came.

“Goodnight, Fjord.”

“Goodnight,” he murmured, and stepped out of the flashlight’s reach.

Fjord got into his truck and drove back to the campsite, and when he crawled in between Jester and Caleb, beneath the roof of the newly repaired tent, his hands were just as cold as they’d ever been.

* * *

His prediction was right; by the time the sun broke through the clouds, Fjord had barely slept a wink, but he had nearly managed to convince himself the night before had been nothing but a fever dream. And even if it wasn’t, it might as well have been. They were leaving today, which meant leaving everything about this place behind too. Back to his boring job, back to school in the fall. Back to not thinking about things that shouldn’t be thought about in the light of day. 

He helped Beau and Yasha dig up the pegs for the final time, then folded all the poles and stuffed them into canvas bags while Jester and Nott rolled up the tent and shoved it into the flatbed of his truck. His movements were slow, curbed by exhaustion, and he silently wished again that someone else in the group had their license. He wasn’t looking forward to the eight hour drive ahead of him. He’d probably have to condescend to listen to some of Beau’s grainy nu-rock or Yasha’s death metal, so long as it kept him awake long enough to deliver them all safely home.

“Didn’t hear you come in last night,” Beau said, sidling up to him as he stowed the cracked remains of their cooler behind the tent. “Long drive, huh?”

Alarm bells rang in Fjord’s head. Did she know something? Did she _sense_ something on him? He turned to look at her, frightened that he’d see a knowing smirk on her lips, but there was nothing but curiousity behind her eyes. 

Beau didn’t know. How _could_ she know? 

It wasn’t like there was anything for her _to_ know. At least, nothing that would matter once they were back in the real world.

“Yeah,” he said. “Long drive.”

Fjord shut the tailgate and walked around to the front to double check the wheels for flats, before she could ask anything else. 

He waited until the rest of his friends were aboard before attempting to climb in himself, wary of flailing limbs and boots to the back of his head as the five of them fought to get situated in the too-small space. Yasha had shotgun by unanimous approval, but it took a full five minutes for the other four to squish themselves into the back seat. Jester was in the middle, which left Beau pressed to the driver side seat and Caleb to the passenger side window, with Veth spread out across both Jester and Caleb’s laps, disdainful of either’s offer to share their seatbelt. Whatever. As long as Fjord didn’t get pulled over, she could do what she liked.

He allowed himself one last glance around the campsite before climbing in himself, taking in the empty firepit, the flattened earth where the absent tent had sat, the lounging rock, the lakeshore beyond. Part of him wanted to stay just one night more. The other was desperate to leave, and never look back.

His hand was on the door latch when he heard the sound of pounding footsteps, coming from the woods beyond their campsite. His immediate thought was a deer, or a bear, and he froze on the spot, listening closely to see if he could guess the gait of the animal approaching. But instead, out of the woods burst something distinctly human shaped.

It was Caduceus, with eyes as bleary as his own, chest heaving up and down as he stumbled towards the truck.

“Fjord!” he called, and Fjord took let go of the door, his mouth falling open as he took in Caduceus’s disarrayed state. 

“Isn’t that the park ranger?” Jester asked from the backseat, but he barely heard the words, already moving to head Caduceus off at the pass.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, not rudely, but still shocked all the same. The lie it had taken all of last night to convince himself of was crumbling before his eyes, before he could gather it back up in his hands. 

Because something _had_ happened. Something was _still_ happening. The world was catching up to him, too quickly, and he gulped down through the dryness in his throat.

“I’m glad I caught you, before you left.” Caduceus’s breathing was finally starting to return to normal. “I have something I want to give you.” He reached his hand into his pocket and drew out something round: a simple contraption of carved wood and glass.

A compass.

Caduceus held it out. “I made it, last night. Something to remember this place by.”

Wordlessly, Fjord took the compass from his palm. It was smaller than Caduceus’s, and the rippled design of gentle waves on its face were more rough-hewn, hastier than the intricate pattern of flowers and leaves he remembered. The back was rough as well, and Fjord turned it over, gasping when he saw the design on the back.

Seven stars were carved out in a familiar arrangement. He ran his fingers over the bowed shape of the Big Dipper, following the smooth planes between stars to find the next. At the top right corner of the circle was an eighth star, larger than all the rest. 

He really wasn’t an astronomy major, but he knew what he was looking at. Polaris: the north star, friend to sailors and travellers alike.

“Caduceus…” he said quietly. All other words escaped him.

“You don’t have to know your path yet. But at least with this, you won’t get lost along the way.”

Without pausing to think, to worry, to agonize, Fjord flung himself forward and wrapped Caduceus in a hug. Slowly, as though he barely knew what to do, Caduceus’s arms wrapped around him as well, and they stood there, until Fjord was sure he could keep his voice steady. 

“Thank you,” he breathed. “Really… thank you.”

When he stepped back, Caduceus gave him a little wave, his smile happy and sad at the same time. “I guess this is goodbye, for real-” Before he could finish, Fjord interrupted, as a sudden thought occurred to him.

“Give me one sec, ok?”

He rushed back to the truck and flung the door open. Before the clamour could start, and Beau’s “what is _going on-”_ could fully leave her lips, he was leaning into the backseat. 

“Jester,” he said urgently, “do you have paper?”

“Yeah, of course, Fjord.” To her credit, Jester didn’t ask for more explanation than that after seeing the desperate look in his eyes. She dove into her backpack and pulled out her sketchbook, then ripped out a page and passed it to him. He reached past Yasha’s stomach to grab a pen from the glove compartment before hopping out of the truck again and frantically scribbling on the hood. When he was finished, he rushed back to Caduceus.

“Here,” he said, holding out the ripped page. Caduceus took it, looking down in confusion.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t have a gift for you,” he explained. “But if you ever wanted to give town life a try, here’s my address. Come find me.” He glanced back at the truck. Five pairs of eyes stared back. He blushed, then turned around. “Find _us._ You wouldn’t have to figure it out alone.”

Caduceus stared down at the paper for a long moment, then carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. “Thank you, Fjord. I don’t know if you know… _could_ know, how much I appreciate this.”

He fingered the compass in his pocket, its weight already a comfort for the road ahead. “I think I might,” he said. 

Someone honked the horn. A few other voices muttered indistinct admonishments to the honker. Fjord chuckled. “I guess I’d better-” he trailed off.

“I guess you should.” 

He gave Caduceus one last smile, then ran back to the truck and hopped inside, turning the ignition so that the roar of the engine drowned out all the questions at his back. Each and every one of them waved to Caduceus as they pulled out onto the trail for the last time, and he waved back. Soon, his pink hair was a speck in the rearview mirror, and then he was gone, as sure as the apparition Fjord at first believed he was.

They were out on the open highway soon enough. By then his friends were easily distracted by the promise of Timmy’s and singalongs on the way home, and Fjord could beg off the conversation to concentrate on the road, and to think about everything that had just happened, so long as he made sure the music kept playing.

Beau didn’t have many options when it came to tapes, and he hadn’t scrounged together enough yet to replace the tapedeck with a combination unit that could handle CDs, so he had to dig into his own collection before long. Though they were far from Cape Breton, they could all at least agree on the Rankins, and he let himself drift into the familiar music as they sped along the cliffs of the lakeshore, following the unbroken line of blue towards home.

_I’m heading back to the north country, with the cold wind in my eyes  
I’ll be there by sunset, before the first snow flies…_

Maybe he didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe he didn’t know where his path lay. But Caduceus might be right. Maybe he had more time than he thought, to figure it out.

_I’ll remember now and then_   
_But don’t ask when_   
_I’ll be back again…_

The sun was just beginning to fade when they finally left the curve of the lake behind. Fjord glanced at the shore one last time. He was almost disappointed that he never got to see the ghostly lantern. By that point, they were close to home, and Yasha’s story felt as real as any other thing that had happened to him that week.

But maybe that was for the best, and Fjord found himself strangely glad that he’d never spotted the lonely sailor. If the ghost wasn’t wandering the lake anymore, maybe that meant he’d found what he was looking for, in the end: someone else wandering in the darkness, with a willing heart, and a helping hand, at last.


End file.
